PQ leader welcomes Maxime Bernier’s support for a third referendum

PQ candidate Alex Boissonneault, right, and Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, leader of the Parti Québécois, speak to media at an election party during a by-election in Quebec's Arthabaska riding, in Victoriaville, Que., on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press)

Paul St-Pierre Plamondon finds it “quite interesting” that People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier has said he would support a possible referendum on Quebec sovereignty.

He even praised the right-wing politician’s “consistency” and reiterated that “it will take everyone” to achieve independence.

“We’re going to take all our allies, even those who are quite far from my convictions (...) Just because I don’t have the same ideas as Maxime Bernier doesn’t mean we’re going to start pointing fingers at each other; on the contrary,” said the PQ leader in a news scrum on Monday after his candidate Alex Boissonneault won the by-election in Arthabaska.

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In an email sent to PPC members on Sunday evening, Bernier indicated that he intends to support the YES camp in a possible referendum on Quebec sovereignty or in Alberta to “break the stranglehold of imperial federalism and pave the way for a final attempt to rebalance our federation.”

“We’ll tell him it makes sense,” said St-Pierre Plamondon. “He really wants, in a libertarian approach that is not at all mine, that there be no more government, or as little as possible. And he says: if I am consistent with myself, then I will get rid of the level where there is the most waste. It’s a consistency that we don’t see in some other conservatives and that has merit.”

“Education” on independence

On Monday, St-Pierre Plamondon admitted that voters in Arthabaska did not seem to be the most interested in the issue of independence.

“I won’t hide from you that this byelection was more about choosing a member of parliament and the quality of representation,” he said.

Despite everything, the PQ leader is maintaining his commitment to hold a third referendum on Quebec sovereignty during his first term.

Freshly elected, new PQ member Boissonneault affirmed the importance of educating people about independence.

“Our party has always been committed to holding a consultation by 2030, and that hasn’t changed. The question is how we are going to talk about it and how we are going to address these issues,“ he said Monday evening after his victory.

”Breaking up the country“

Bernier’s party says, however, that it does not share ”the ultimate goal of the separatist movements in Quebec and Alberta to break up the country,“ but that ”their demands are legitimate."

“Given the constant trend toward greater centralization, the only way to bring about meaningful change under the current government may be to take advantage of the constitutional crisis that would follow a majority vote in favor of secession in a provincial referendum,” the CPC website states.

Bernier, who voted YES in the 1995 referendum, slammed the door on the Conservative Party of Canada after losing the leadership race to Andrew Scheer.

In 2018, he founded the PPC, a political party on the federal scene that is further to the right than his former party. Since then, Bernier has never been re-elected. In the last federal election, his party won only 0.7 per cent of the vote.

The PPC proposes to impose “a moratorium on new permanent residents for as many years as necessary, until the housing crisis has been resolved, the negative economic impact of mass immigration has been neutralized, and the process of social and cultural disintegration due to mass immigration has been reversed.”

He also wants to repeal the Multiculturalism Act and “focus on integrating immigrants into Canadian society.”

On the environment, Bernier wants to withdraw Canada from the Paris Agreement and abolish “the taxes, regulations, subsidies, and programs adopted by the Liberal government to combat so-called climate change.”

He also wants to create a ministry dedicated to reducing the size of government “that will systematically review all programs with the goal of abolishing ideologically driven programs that promote wokeness, programs whose primary purpose is to buy votes, obsolete and ineffective programs that no longer serve a clear purpose, etc.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Aug. 12, 2025.